Place to Belong, a by Lauraine Snelling

Christmas. She picked up the dropped stitch, making sure the yarn was turnedthe correct way on the needle, and went back to finishing the knit row. Then she would do the purl row. And then the knit row.
    She felt someone’s gaze on her and looked up to catch Lucas’s smile. She returned the smile, and her thoughts scampered back to his proposal, or rather to his vow to make her love him. Was there any reason for her not to love him? He was certainly good-looking, with his boyish face and short curly hair. Many marriages started on friendship and some with just a letter in the mail—mail-order brides. Of course some of them were never happy, yet others were. But then, marriages based on love alone sometimes turned out happily, when others did not. So confusing, life. In the Wild West Show, she’d had few choices to make. Now it seemed that everything involved making a choice—every single thing.
    Oh no! Do not think on anything but knitting . She rammed the needles into the ball of yarn and bit her bottom lip. What a waste of time this was. She could be filling shells for her practice shooting. At least she could do that right. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for all this homemaking stuff, although she did enjoy the cooking and learning new things in the kitchen.
    After the others went on up the hill to the cabin and the brothers headed down the hallway to their rooms, she joined Mavis in the kitchen. “What are you doing now?”
    â€œI decided to make sourdough pancakes for breakfast, so I am feeding the sourdough.”
    â€œâ€™Night, Mor,” Gretchen said after a yawn. “’Night, Cassie.”
    With just the two of them left in the kitchen, Cassie stirred the milk and flour as Mavis told her. They measured out two cups of sourdough starter for the pancakes and added two of the fresh mix into the dough and set the crock back up on the shelf behind the stove. Then Mavis beat the starter into the dough that was left and set that on the warming shelf of the stove.
    Mavis wiped off her hands. “This is what we used all theyears before we could buy soda and baking powder at the store. Sourdough was good yeast. Leavening. I got my original starter from an old woman who came out here with her son and his wife. She died several years later, but she made sure that her starter lived on. She told me then that it was already fifty years old. So when my family starts homes of their own, this starter will go with them.”
    Cassie inhaled the faint perfume of her dough. She knew it would be stronger by morning when she’d add the beaten eggs and bacon grease and more flour. Somehow the thought of passing on dough like this made her feel like crying. Was having starter passed on part of becoming a member of the family?

    The next morning they were just sitting down for breakfast when a knock on the back door caught them by surprise. Ransom answered the door.
    â€œCome in, Chief! You’re just in time for Mor’s sourdough pancakes.”
    Cassie smiled at her longtime friend. “Please sit down.”
    Chief sat, but he waved away the plate she set in front of him. “I come to say good-bye, like I say before.”
    â€œGood-bye? What . . . ?”
    He glanced around the table at all the looks of shock. “I go back to reservation now, before snow starts. I told you from beginning I would do that.”
    Cassie had trouble finding words. “I know. But . . . I thought you liked it here. I was hoping and trusting that you had changed your mind.”
    â€œChief, John, w-we . . .” Mavis stuttered to a stop. “I hoped you would make your home here. You are part of our family.”
    He shook his head. “Thank you, but I need to go home.”
    â€œHome on the reservation is not what it used to be.” Ransomtoo was shaking his head. “You know we have plenty here for you to do, and by spring, perhaps we’ll even